MY TWO CENTS...

just some of my thoughts that I wanted to put down...



IF you are the "praying" kind and nothing seems to be happening for you then I would say you need to ask yourself, "Are you living your life as HE would want you to"?? It seems to me that some think they can just live as THEY want to...not ever go to church or just go from time to time, keep doing the same things over and over that they routinely ask for forgiveness for, you stay the same person, NOTHING changes in your life, but you say your prayers faithfully every night but you seem never to get an answer...or the one YOU want anyway.



YES, GOD loves EVERYONE! NO, I am not perfect, I still have tons of things I need to do better/different...I AM NOT JUDGING ANYONE! I am just doing all that I can do and then will pray about the rest! I pray for myself daily too!!



I just feel that the things that stay with me that I learn each week in church, I need to share. Bottom line, you cant continue to live you life as YOU want and then expect GOD to bless you or answer your prayers to your liking (even when you are living your life as HE wants you to not all your prayers will be answered as YOU want them to be, it is HIS WILL not ours). You cant just not ever go to church or go from time to time when its convenient to you and then when something goes wrong you plead and pray to GOD and expect him to be there. Where were YOU when he wanted YOU there...in church or talking (praying) to him even when things aren't bad or helping someone else out, even if you had to go out of your way to do it or NOT doing something you routinely do because someone else needed you worse??

I just think everyone (including me) need to remember your priorities AND the order in which you should remember them: GOD, your wife/husband, your children, your work or career and then your friends. As hard as it may be to live your life like this, or regardless of how you think its crazy that your wife/husband should come before your children, you will be amazed how everything just falls into place when you live as HE wants you to. When you live like HE wants you to instead of how YOU want to that's when you are blessed more than you can even imagine, that's when your wife/husband AND your children seem to be so much happier and things seem to get and be so much easier, that's when you are having financial problems and then all the sudden one day you get a check in the mail that you were not expecting but boy it could not have come at a better time!

Speaking of financial, when you tithe at church, even though you may have to give up something else or not buy pointless, meaningless stuff that you don't NEED or tan or get your toes/nails done or whatever it is that you do that could be given up in order to bring back some of HIS money to your local church! Yes, I said HIS money. Nothing you currently have on this earth is YOURS, you wouldn't have it if he didn't give it to you. Part of why GOD wants us to tithe is because HE knows money can turn into an obsession, HE knows it can be used for evil instead of good. HE is helping YOU out here!! This is something my family struggles with...we bring our money back to HIM but sure wish it could be more cause its certainly not the 10% that the bible says we are to bring back to HIM. But when you bring money to HIM, money you think you don't have and do this consistently, YOU WILL BE AMAZED AT WHAT HE DOES IN YOUR LIFE! If you are living your life as HE wants you to HE will ALWAYS make sure you are taken care of! This is when your faith has to come into play. You have to have faith that if you are living as HE wants you to that HE will take care of you.

Yes, we all sin and will continue to do so because we are not GOD, we are not perfect and never will be! But if you are truly a believer and a follower of JESUS then you will be forgiven for your sins, washed clean, new slate, start anew...you will mess up, you then ask GOD to forgive you and then its done, its over, no need to keep asking him to forgive you for that specific thing over and over and over, you get to actually just LET IT GO and move on. But GOD knows every ones true heart. So if you think you can keep making the SAME sin over and over and over just because you think all you have to do is ask him to forgive you and then its over, that's NOT the case. That would be totally taking advantage of something just for the good of it...you have to sacrifice and live like HE wants you to in order to have HIS blessings, HIS grace and HIS amazing love! And continually doing the same sin over and over and over again is not living as HE wants you to. Our pastor said something the other day that really stuck with me. He said he loves to hear about stories where 30, 40 and 50 year old people have finally became Christians and been re-born to live for HIM instead of for themselves. But what he loves to hear even more are people who say they have been living for Christ their whole life, since they were 10, 11 and 12 years old. He said people think they have all this time on their side, that they can go be wild and crazy for 5, 10 years and then when that gets old and they are tired of living like that they can then turn to GOD ask for forgiveness for all the bad things they have ever said and done and then they will go to heaven. You know, like all those people that murder someone or drive drunk and kill someone or whatever and go to prison for the rest of their lives and ONLY then do they turn to GOD and beg GOD to forgive them and cleanse them...and the truth is you can do this, if what you are saying and praying to GOD is real and true (and GOD will know if it is or not and the way you live your life after this will prove it) then HE will forgive you, HE will cleanse you, HE will save you. BUT what if the day you have been waiting for to make this plea to GOD, never comes...what if you get into a terrible accident and die, what if GOD comes back tomorrow??? YOU can't afford to WAIT because right now is just not the right time or right now is just not convenient for you. You cant play this same game with the lives of your children...we don't know when our lives here on this earth will be over or WHEN HE will come back but we do know that HE WILL come back! Don't you want to have your "house" in order when that time comes, whether that is tomorrow, next week, next month, next year...

Again, everything I have written here applies to me too! I am not judging anyone! GOD will judge us all one day. We all will HAVE to answer to HIM! I just hope we are all ready when that time comes, whenever that might be. Because the one thing that we all know is that you never know when you will take your last breath or say your last prayer or attend your last church service...